Well, know weed has been legalized, albeit for private consumption, and the past few years of legalized weed in Colorado have gotten to a dangerous place. This sentiment is not so much my own, but one stemming from the minds of Adams County who denied an event permit for the event to happen this year. Apparently, in the past few Cups, too much weed has been smoked in public, too many people have been in attendance, overcrowding the event space by more thousands than the officials are at all comfortable with. The mix of reckless abandon for the law and the swelling of the crowds who would gladly participate in this reckless abandon seem to have caught up to the Cannabis Cup, at least to the point that it won’t be happening. Caught up indeed.

The Cannabis Cup has been a staple of 4/20-based celebrations for some time now, grounded in a lack of care for the standards of the time and a blatant flaunting of the stoner culture that permeates much of the marijuana industry. Across its hosting, it has always been a seemingly tricky time of navigating the legality of the plant while still allowing smokers to gather and imbibe. The question then, might seem to appear, what happened? When did we go too far? And why now, when weed is more progressively accepted than ever before, has the Cup come under such scrutiny?

To understand why the Cannabis Cup is no longer allowed, to read between the lines of what is happening versus what some might say is happening, it is important to consider what happened this last year: with the swell of support for cannabis, we might have lost sight.

The Cup has always been a celebration of pot. Often a blatant and outright flaunting of disdain for the view of the “establishment” against their backward thinking of weed. Before, however, it was more controlled. And where the event was a middle finger against the establishment, it was a middle finger against the establishment, it was a slightly controlled middle finger against the establishment. Yes we said fuck you to the authority, but we didn’t also spit in their face while we were doing it, and we didn’t cross as many lines.

As the industry processes the fact that the Cannabis Cup is no longer happening and reels from this type of decision, I have heard a few things being said. Some people like to claim this is Denver’s way of trying to push back against weed. Others are claiming that this might be an ill omen approaching the 2016 election with some of the talks coming out from the political right on their disdain for pot. Others yet claim this is just something to be expected when dealing with the man. What all of these people forget is that we did this to ourselves.

Now, it is likely not exactly your fault or my fault that this happened. But as a collective, this is our fault. Because as a collective, we spit in the face of authority one too many times. And in one too many ways. Here is how.

There are many things you can ignore, and many things the law won’t get involved with. If you are committing a minor crime in your house, for
example, no one is going to know. Ask the old home growers. If you had one plant you kept quiet in a closet and for purely personal use, the chances are that you never were going to get your door knocked down. When you start cloning that plant. And selling it. And setting up shop. And telling people about it. This is when the government gets mad. For years now, Adams County has evidently recognized the benefit of hosting the Cup in Denver; if they didn’t, we would’ve been shut down some time ago.